Rogue (Dead Man's Ink, #2)(31)
This is nothing like the encounters we’ve shared before. This feels honest. Like a promise somehow. He holds onto me so tight as he f*cks me. It’s not long before both of us are shaking with the effort of keeping ourselves together. I lock my legs around his waist and we come at the same time, Rebel growling into my neck, crushing me to him as he climaxes.
We lay together, panting, unable to move as the early morning sunshine shines down on our bodies, and I realize that he gave me what I asked of him. He made me forget. He made me forget where he began and I ended.
And it feels perfect.
TEN
REBEL
Burying a body’s never fun. When you’re only burying part of it, it’s even less fun. Back in Afghanistan, my boy and I buried f*cking dismembered arms and legs all the time. The Marine Corps were pretty diligent about making sure the pieces of people they were sending back to the States all belonged to the same body, but I’m guessing often times DNA got a little fused together. Not a pleasant thought. Really f*cked up, in fact. I made sure the army knew I didn’t want to be flown back to Alabama if I was K.I.A. Told them I wanted to be cremated and scattered to the four winds from a rooftop in Kabul. Last thing I ever wanted to do was give my * father the pleasure of interring me in the Aubertin family mausoleum instead of burying me with my brothers in a military cemetery. He didn’t respect the time I spent overseas. He would have stuck me in the cheapest pine box he could find, left me on the bottom shelf underneath my mother’s dusty coffin, blinked a couple of times at what remained of his only son, then casually locked the door. He wouldn’t have returned until it was time for his own empty husk to be shelved and forgotten about, too.
Motherf*cker.
Burying Bron is a different affair entirely. I’m sick to my stomach and in pain, but I figure if I have enough energy to make Sophia come then it’s only right that I have the energy to go out into the desert and dig a grave with Brassic.
As I thrust the shovel into the sun-baked dirt three miles south of the Widow Makers’ compound, sweat running in rivers down my back, running into my eyes, salt in my mouth, my head spinning just enough to let me know this is a really bad idea, I’m trying not to think about Sophia. I’m trying not to think about how edge-of-a-knife this whole thing is. I’m ready to burn the whole f*cking world down for this girl. I wonder if she knows that? I wonder if she knows how many people I’d tear limb from limb myself in order to keep her safe.
I’m not like her, though. I don’t wear every single thought I have on my face, or in my body language. I keep things close to my chest. It’s the only way I’ve survived this world for so long.
Other members of the club have survived by alternative means. Cade’s stone cold like me, but his temper is legendary. People don’t f*ck with him, because they know the consequences will be dire to say the f*cking least. Shay uses her body to protect herself. She’ll make you think you’re about to get the ride of our life, when in actual fact you’re about to get a stiletto blade slipped through your eardrum and into your gray matter without a by your leave. She really is a true widow maker. The guy I’m digging this grave with, Brassic, is our resident bomb maker. He won’t hurt you with his fists. He’ll hurt you with a pound of C4 and a remote detonator while he’s a mile away slamming back a shot of whiskey.
He doesn’t talk while we dig. Neither of us do. He’s angry that I wouldn’t let him go after the guy who killed his best friend’s girl last night when his rage was peaking, but he won’t show it openly. Good thing for him, too. I’m not in the mood to be questioned. My side is killing me, and all I can think about as our shovels make dry, shink, shink, shink sounds in the dirt is that I somehow have to fix this f*cking Ramirez mess under the noses of the DEA. Highly f*cking inconvenient.
“We’re digging this hole for the wrong person, you realize,” Brassic says. It’s the first thing he’s said since we started working, and it’s so true it makes my head pound.
“I do know.”
Brassic grunts. He’s slick with sweat like I am, except the vast expanse of his back bears the Widow Makers’ club badge instead of the Virgin Mary that I have inked into my skin. She was my first tattoo, my holy lady. The space had already been taken by the time I started the Widow Makers, and besides, it’s better for me not to have any club markings. There are times when I need to go places, see and do things that I wouldn’t be able to if people suspected I had affiliations to a biker gang. In those instances, if they knew I was the president of a biker gang, I’d be murdered on the spot.
“So when, then?” Brassic asks. He sounds tired; I know for a fact he was up all night with Keeler, drinking and smashing the shit out of the workshop in one of the outhouses, so his head must be killing him.
“Soon. Really soon, man,” I tell him.
“And you’ll give me free rein?”
I mop my brow, eyes still stinging, my head swimming, and I say, “Buddy, when this thing goes down, you don’t need to worry. You can turn the bastard into red mist and I will thank you for it.”
In the distance, thick plumes of dust billow up into pale, washed out blue of the sky overhead. Cars. Three of them. I can’t see what kind they are or who is driving them, but they’re traveling fast.